A Little Cleaner, Now

I was able to spend some time clearing off the last two tables in the Stampin' Garage that I haven't put my new oilcloth on as yet.

These were the two larger tables, the ones that seem to contain 99% of everything out in the garage! LOL

Most especially "my table". I was amazed at how much "stuff" had accumulated on the top of that one! Gave me another opportunity to gather CS scraps into one place.

Right now I have a shoe box overflowing with scraps. Soon I'll sort these by size.

The half sheets will go with the rest I already have - sorted by color family (i.e., reds, pinks, etc.). I generally don't use many of these, but they're a God-send when I've run out of a particular color and know I can dig thru these and probably find at least a 1/2 sheet of that color.

The next batch will be the quarter sheets. I generally start my design process using these and scraps of white or vanilla.

Then come the smaller scraps. I now have a small container where I keep those that are large enough to be used with onw of the Big Shot dies I have. It's so handy to have them all together. But they're not sorted by color - they're just stashed in the box.

I get some of my most creative color combos by doing that. There are times when I find 3 colors together that I would have NEVER put together - yet they work.

I still have about 10 more shoe boxes full of "stuff" around here - hopefully, before I get bored with this task, I'll be able to gather them all up, and dump everything into a larger box to begin the sorting process.

Wanna see some great cards? Had my Team Meeting earlier this week and here are the swaps we all made from the Shoebox Swap that evening.

This one is mine. I had the Lattice dies already cut and added some of the Autumn Meadows DSP, and a cut out of the largest leaf from the Autumn Spendor set that I'd stamped using the Rock & Roll technique.



















And here's Natalie's card. She used the scallop piece from Sweet Season, and added a direct-to-paper technique.


















Here's Susan's. She used the Wandering Words set. I really like that set - it covers Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's Day! From the very beginning I've seen that set being used on the envelopes that contain the cards for all those occasions.















And Del's - she LOVES Halloween, so we may see that genre from her all year! Bet she owns almost every Halloween set we carry! LOL



















And, finally, Sandy's. She had already embossed the circle design in White embossing powder and we used the daubers and Craft inks and to it the Bermuda Bay color you see now.















Hope you enjoyed those samples - did it inspire you to pull out YOUR stamps, inks & papers to start YOUR creative process movning forward? I hope so.